McCain's April Fools Message

by Steve

John McCain gave us his April Fool’s joke yesterday, when he defended his idiocy about Iraq by lecturing the media in Baghdad that they weren’t giving the American public the true picture about how well things are going inside Iraq.

"The American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here. They're not getting the full picture of the drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city, the situation in Anbar province, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades which are performing well, and other signs of progress having been made," said McCain, of Arizona.

He said the Republican congressional delegation he led to Iraq drove from Baghdad's airport to the center of the city, citing that as proof that security was improving in the capital. Prominent visitors normally make the trip by helicopter.

Yet on a weekend when we lost 6 more soldiers in Iraq, the AP was quick to point out the obvious.

The delegation was accompanied by heavily armed U.S. troops when they were not in the Green Zone, site of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government. They traveled in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.

It’s this kind of denial and senility from McCain, as well as the doubts about Rudy Giuliani among conservatives that have led to the boomlet for “Law and Order” actor and former Tennessee GOP senator Fred Thompson to enter the presidential race. Leave it to conservatives once again to look for an actor on a white horse to save them, and Thompson holds positions that meet the litmus test of the American Taliban, yet he talks better and looks the part.

It remains to be seen what the American public will think once they learn of his views, and get over the glow of having an actor for a president once again. Yet the one person who probably doesn’t want Thompson to run is “L&O” creator and executive producer Dick Wolf, who now faces major problems for the upcoming season of the show if Thompson jumps into the race. He would have to cast someone else immediately as a new DA or else face flak from other candidates for he and NBC giving Thompson an unfair platform to look the part each week. But before we get too far into such speculation, someone should ask Thompson now if he shares McCain’s view that the media is the problem in Baghdad so that we can determine early if senility is in the GOP’s DNA for 2008.